Bottlenecking and/or Overheating? Underwhelmed Upgrading from 4870 to GTX 670

Aldyrin · May 16, 2012

Well, I waited forever for this upgrade, and from all the reviews I read, the GTX 670 should be able to max out with all setting set to highest in WOW at 1920x1080. However, when I tried this and flew around in Stormwind, I saw framerates drop down in the 15 fps range...

I'm using the 2GB Gigabyte OC version of the card.

E8400 @ 3.6 Ghz
P5Q Pro
Can't remember memory off the top of my head. I believe it is running at 961 Mhz.
128 m4 SSD @ SATA2 rates
silverstone fortress ft02

This was at stock speeds. I played around with bumping up the clock and memory speeds a bit, but then noticed furmark caused temps to rise to 96 C, so I shut that down quickly. Dropping back to stock speeds, the temp still rose to 89 C and might have kept rising if I let it. The fan got quite loud at these temps. Only ran for a minute or so to reach these temps, then I cancelled the tests.

So I really have two questions:
Is my WoW performance to be expected considering my other components? I was really expecting this card to be able to knock WoW out of the park.

Is my GTX 670 experiencing normal temps in this environment? They seem pretty high considering what other reviews have been seeing. Running the Heaven bench in a loop, temps topped off at about 71 C.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: forgot to say i'm running Win 7 64 bit.

EarthDog · May 16, 2012

I see a dual core for a game that likes quads is the first thing.

1. Turn down shadows from ultra as it seems they are borked.
2. Adjust your fan profiles to accomdate/keep the temps low.

bmwbaxter · May 16, 2012

Furmark produces much higher temps than heaven.

Also at 1920x1080 you are still very CPU dependent. So a quad core will help.

Pretty much follow EarthDogs advice. It should help a decent amount.

xander89 · May 16, 2012

Aldyrin said:
Well, I waited forever for this upgrade, and from all the reviews I read, the GTX 670 should be able to max out with all setting set to highest in WOW at 1920x1080. However, when I tried this and flew around in Stormwind, I saw framerates drop down in the 15 fps range...

I'm using the 2GB Gigabyte OC version of the card.

E8400 @ 3.6 Ghz
P5Q Pro
Can't remember memory off the top of my head. I believe it is running at 961 Mhz.
128 m4 SSD @ SATA2 rates
silverstone fortress ft02

This was at stock speeds. I played around with bumping up the clock and memory speeds a bit, but then noticed furmark caused temps to rise to 96 C, so I shut that down quickly. Dropping back to stock speeds, the temp still rose to 89 C and might have kept rising if I let it. The fan got quite loud at these temps. Only ran for a minute or so to reach these temps, then I cancelled the tests.

So I really have two questions:
Is my WoW performance to be expected considering my other components? I was really expecting this card to be able to knock WoW out of the park.

Is my GTX 670 experiencing normal temps in this environment? They seem pretty high considering what other reviews have been seeing. Running the Heaven bench in a loop, temps topped off at about 71 C.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: forgot to say i'm running Win 7 64 bit.

a 670 is going to get some serious bottleneck if you are running a e8400. I would have used the money to upgrade my cpu mobo and ram

. Also wow is pretty hard to gauge sometimes. I mean i get about 40-60 fps in SW with my setup ( sig) but then i get like 250 fps outside. Its just cos its so clogged up with players. I would suggest upgrading your cpu mobo and ram asap. You can pick up a i5 2500k ram and mobo for not much nowadays. If thats too much get a i7 920 mobo and ram combo off ebay. Theya re selling for next to nothing these days and that will boost you fps ALOT. Just dont expect 100's of fps in SW whatever your setup

Aldyrin · May 16, 2012

So it is normal to see ~90C on this card at stock speed with furmark? I can manually set the fan to 100% and see what happens, but it sounds like a jet engine. That or i'm used to my arctic cooler I used on the 4870.

Would Skyrim be a better gaming test?

I was planning on upgrading come ivy bridge, but the improvement over sandy was so small I had changed my mind. I guess I thought I was still limited by my video card.

edit: I have the cash to get a new cpu/mobo/etc, but I wasn't planning on it since I thought the performance increase for my applications would be marginal. If I upgrade I'll probably get the ivy bridge i3750k to support pcie 3.0/future proofing.

bmwbaxter · May 16, 2012

Yes that temp is normal in furmark.

Just about any game or benchmark would be better than furmark for testing temps.

Ivy is still a very nice platform, uses less power and would be massive improvement over what you currently have.

xander89 · May 16, 2012

Aldyrin said:
So it is normal to see ~90C on this card at stock speed with furmark? I can manually set the fan to 100% and see what happens, but it sounds like a jet engine. That or i'm used to my arctic cooler I used on the 4870.

Would Skyrim be a better gaming test?

I was planning on upgrading come ivy bridge, but the improvement over sandy was so small I had changed my mind. I guess I thought I was still limited by my video card.

well you aint going to see another line of processors Haswel till next year at the very earliest. So you might be waiting for a while. You might as well pick up a cheap SB if you can and enjoy it. You will get double the performance you get now.

Ah sorry didnt see the part about temps. Well i saw 70c but that seemed fine to me as my 480 runs at that while gaming, so thought nothing of it. What case do you have? If its a hotbox you might jsut get those temps. It could also just be a bad one. They are pretty much 680s that didnt make the grade. You could always slap some aftermarket TIM on it to see if that helps. But it may void your warranty if you remove the cooler.

Either that or RMA it, pick up a new mobo ram and CPU, and then get a cheaper graphics card, ( if all you are playing is wow.)

Aldyrin · May 16, 2012

I'm running with a silverstone ft02, so it is by no means a heat box. I was concerned about whether or not my card could be one of the bad ones as far as temps go.

As I said in my edit above, I will probably upgrade my mobo/cpu as well as a result of this issue. I have the money saved up, but thought the performance increase would be marginal for my applications.

In addition to WoW, I play D3 and Skyrim at the moment.

xander89 · May 16, 2012

bmwbaxter said:
Yes that temp is normal in furmark.

Just about any game or benchmark would be better than furmark for testing temps.

Ivy is still a very nice platform, uses less power and would be massive improvement over what you currently have.

both Sb and IB would give him a needed boost in his gaming FPS. Especially in WoW. I saw a 15 fps hop in SW in the most crammed areas going from a 920 to a 2700k ( that was up from 25 fps normally to about 40 fps)

wingman99 · May 22, 2012

WOW i think is a dual core game for system recommendations.

When you get your new gaming rig let us know how much better it does .

xander89 said:
both Sb and IB would give him a needed boost in his gaming FPS. Especially in WoW. I saw a 15 fps hop in SW in the most crammed areas going from a 920 to a 2700k ( that was up from 25 fps normally to about 40 fps)

Was that improvement with the same video card?

EarthDog · May 23, 2012

wingman99 said:
Was that improvement with the same video card?

I saw a 15 fps hop in SW in the most crammed areas going from a 920 to a 2700k ( that was up from 25 fps normally to about 40 fps)

xander89 · May 23, 2012

hehe cheers ED. Yup it was with the same gfx card, an old gtx 480 SOC. WoW is quite CPU dependant i find/is the general consensus of those who play it!

bmwbaxter · May 23, 2012

Any game at 1080P and below is CPU dependent. The higher the res the more it falls to the GPU.

EarthDog · May 23, 2012

WoW though, and games like it, are CPU dependent regardless.

xander89 · May 23, 2012

even at 1080 he would get a MASSIVE boost in fps from a new processor. I wouldnt run a 670 on anything less than a 2500k tbh. Even then i would suggest overclocking it to get the most out of the card. I remembered when i haad 2 gtx 8800's on a [email protected] ( my nforce mobo at the time wouldnt let me overclock past like 2.9 ghz.) it was a massive bottleneck.

now just imagine a duel core of the same gen with a 670 which is even more powerful. Thats the kind of bottleneck you are looking at Aldyrin.

Bottlenecking and/or Overheating? Underwhelmed Upgrading from 4870 to GTX 670

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